


Bent Out of Shape

by mustardcupcakes



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Abandonment, Abuse, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Child Neglect, Destiel - Freeform, M/M, Major Character Injury, Major character death - Freeform, Neglectful John Winchester, Past Child Abuse, Sabriel - Freeform, Stanford Era, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-26
Updated: 2018-11-06
Packaged: 2019-07-18 01:40:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16108124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mustardcupcakes/pseuds/mustardcupcakes
Summary: Sam left for Stanford. Life is going right. The the impala reluctantly rumbles on the front lawn. "He hit me, Sam. Beat me. Hell, I didn't leave the backseat of that car for three damn days." Time to come home, Sammy.





	1. Chapter 1

The purr of the impala's engine has long since died out. I've been sitting in front of this dorm room building for the last hour and a half, my heart and mind at war inside of me. I could just turn around and go back to dad and tell him that I couldn't find him. Or that he wouldn't come back. I won't even have to walk up those stairs and up into his room. I can just let him have the life he's always dreamed of... But what will dad do to me when I come back empty handed? I'm opening the car door and making my way to the building before I can suffer through the next thought.

My boots thump up the stone steps like an ax on the chopping block, every step bringing me closer to something that I've never felt even remotely right with doing.

"Hey, do any of you guys know a Sam Winchester? Shaggy hair, brown eyes. Big. Uh, I mean real big. Like about yea high?" I ask, throwing my hand up over my head to reference his height. Fingers point, directions are given, and I continue on my way up the stairs.

The corridor seems to stretch on and on. Time and guilt have always had that effect. Making things seem much longer and drawn out than they really are, turning my stomach into knotted, writhing, venomous snakes. The snakes constrict tighter and tighter the closer I get to Sam's door. Can I still turn around and leave unnoticed? Like I was never here?

My knuckles hover hesitantly over Sam's door, my nerves making me shake slightly. Come on, Dean... The hollow sound of my knuckles rapping on the wood meets my ears before the realization of my actions. No turning back now.

The door inches open. "Yes?" His tone is light and airy, undisturbed. The he looks up from his study booklet. His eyes quickly turn from warm and inviting to freezing cold and guarded. "What do you want?"

"Sam, hear me out-" The door begins to slam in my face but the toe of my boot jams in the way to stop it, making it bounce back on Sam.

"I've already heard enough, Dean. Honestly, just go. You're wasting your time." Sam huffs, turning away from the door and into his room. I take a step into the space and close the door behind me.

"Sam, we gotta talk about this. Dad's flipping his shit and I still haven't heard the end of it. Come home."

"'Home'? Dean, what home? I haven't had my own bed with clean sheets for years. All we've ever had is the back of that stupid car and dirty hotel rooms." Sadness threatens to seep in place of all that guarded anger. "We don't have a home, D."

"Sam..." I look at my hands. My rough, shaking hands. "You know that we couldn't settle down. Not for long, anyways-"

"Dean, if you're here to recite dad's old sob story, then I don't want to hear it." Sam turns to discard his booklet on the dresser and his back is to me before I can even take my next breath.

"Listen. I know you know that story frontwards and backwards and you're probably sick and tired of hearing it--"

"That's an understatement.." Sam mutters.

"Let me finish." My tone forces his mouth shut, putting him in his place as younger brother. "I know you know all of this but you gotta come back, man, please." The room is dead quiet, my ears buzzing with the absence of sound. Stepping forward, I put my hand on his shoulder, his shirt warm under my touch. "Come on, man. We gotta go."

He forcefully shrugs me off as he turns quickly, throwing my arm away. I flinch. "No, Dean, I don't-" His voice is severed off in his throat as he notices my change in behavior. He meets his confused eyes to my embarrassed ones. "Dean, what happened when I was gone?" I'm silent. Sam steps forward only to result in a step right back to where he was when my facial expressions tighten. "Dean?"

"I uh.. Dad didn't like that I let you go."

"What..?"

"He hit me, Sam. Beat me. Hell, I didn't leave the back seat of that car for three damn days." My tone is bitter and the weak words taste like acid on my tongue, burning the roof and walls of my mouth as I speak.

"Dean, I-"

"Save it, Sammy. I'm not here to cry to my little brother. I'm here to tell you that it's time to come home." I lick the pad of my thumb and rub under my left eye, revealing a jigsaw of purple, yellow, and baby blue. "Some broad at a rest stop taught me a few tricks." I can't help but chuckle but it doesn't sound right. Electronic and artificial, like the effort to joke is inappropriate and isn't worth it.

"Dean, I'm sorry.. I didn't know." Sam tries, once again experimenting with the vast space between us.

"You didn't know?" This time the sounds I project are more sarcastic and hurt, a scoff hurling itself from my vocal chords like a frantic man on fire. "Who do you think stood between you and dad whenever something bad happened? Or when the two of you were at each other's throats? Me. It was always me.” The look on my brothers face confirms everything coming out of my mouth. “Sammy the golden boy was always on a pedestal, always to be protected. You ran away on my watch. I looked everywhere for you, I thought you were dead. And when dad came home…” I can feel the fear flood through my veins and soak deep into my bones. I can tell something has changed in my eyes because of the wounded look on my little brothers face. "It was always me, Sam..."


	2. Chapter 2

"Dean, I'm sorry." I try, looking him in the eyes, trying my best to step forward without him stepping away again. It's nerve wracking how skittish and broken dad can make him. Dean has been cut, stabbed, bitten, beaten to a pulp. Hell, he's even been shot. But when an obedient soldier is beaten by his own commander? That changes someone.

"Yeah, I heard you." He turns to the window, wiping over his face with one hand. A sigh hushes from his lips. "Look." He turns hack to me, any trace of abuse and weakness burned from his features. "I don't want to rip you up from this peachy keen, white picket fence, apple pie life you got going on here, I really don't Sammy, but we seriously gotta go now."

"What? Dean no, I have an interview on Monday, I can't."

"Sam, seriously, we have to go. Dad sent me here two days ago. If we don't show up soon, he's gonna have another fit and you know it." Dean steps towards me, reaching for my wrist but I'm too fast.

"Dean, I said, 'no'." He tries grabbing for me again. He's got some nerve... "Now I'm sorry about Dad, I really am, but I'm not going." The fire in Dean's eyes looks as if it's burning deep down in his stomach, consuming his insides. The fierceness almost scares me but I'm not backing down, not from this. I've worked too damn hard just to be ripped up again.

"Sam." A stern voice grates from the other side of the room. I turn. Dean's left eye twitches. My face heats up.

"Dad..." My voice is barely a whisper. He looks rugged, his beard gruff and sharp like a porcupines quills. My eyes travel down and examine the familiar stranger in front of me.

Hair infested with grease and old car smell, evidence of a few too many exempted showers.

Splotches of car oil on his jeans and mud caked on his shoes. Did the car break down on the way here?

Hands- left wrapped in dirty gauze, the edges fringing out in odd ways as if his nervous tendencies had gotten the best of him for far too long. The right cut and bruised, old blood cracked and almost brown in color. The hands he used to beat his little soldier. Anger now begins to boil in the pit of my stomach.

"It's time to come home, Sammy-"

"Don't call me that." I interrupt, my eyes forming into sharp daggers, slicing into his grimy flesh as he attempts to speak.

"Excuse me?" He looks at me with a stare so poisonous it could kill an entire colony of deranged sewer rats.

"I said, 'don't call me that'. Only Dean is allowed to call me that." A wave of goosebumps shiver over my skin, my own voice so cold it makes my heart palpitate with anxiety.

"I don't know what kind of crowd you've been surrounding yourself with, boy, but you will not speak to me like that." He steps forward. "Now, it's time to go."

My legs twitch, sending messages to my brain, telling it that it's time to run but thick stubbornness and dignity glues me in place. "You expect me to come with you at the drop of a damn hat after all of the hell you put us through? After what you did to Dean?" I scoff, the sound burning like acid in my throat. "Not a chance." My arms cross over my chest, acting as a makeshift shield in front of me. I can sense Dean getting tense behind me, ready to jump between dad and I just like always. Leave it to Dean to be Mr. Hero.

"You don't know what you're talking about, Samuel-"

"Actually, I think I do. And it's 'Sam'."

"I've had enough of your tone. Now it's time to go." He lunges forward, reaching his grubby, damaged hands around the back of my neck; dragging me towards the door that stands wide open like a mouth threatening to swallow me whole. Students passing by freeze in parallel doorways watch the altercation unfold, not caring enough to actually call any form of authority.

"Dad!-" I choke out, my shirt collar squeezing around my throat. I hear Dean grunt as he stumbles over the mountain of textbooks beside my bed to try and stop him from tearing me in half.

"I told you it's time to come home and you will obey your father!"

"You're a poor excuse for a father!" And just like that, all struggling stops. Breath is restored and my lungs begin to sooth as air goes back into them.

"What did you just say to me?" The words are bitter and sore, almost injured. Not injured and angry like his hands but injured and weak like someone that's just been kicked while they were down.

"No." Frustrated tears begin to prick at my eyes. "No, you're not allowed to sound like that. You are not allowed to guilt trip us into submission. I'm not letting you do this anymore." My hands shake as I pull away from him, struggling to stand straight among the books littering the floor.

"Sam..." Dean's voice is a distant memory at the back of my mind. I shake it away, my hair sticking to the tears and beads of sweat freckled over my cheeks.

"No, Dean." Pushing past the disgrace in front of me, I force my way through the crowd outside my door. "Move."


	3. Chapter 3

"Damn it... Sam!" I yell after him as he pushes past dad and into the crowded hall. "What the hell was that?" I ask, sighing as I rub my eyes. When I look back at him, he gives me a stern look.

"We need to go get him." 

"'Go get him'? What, are you serious?" I can feel the unmistakable disbelief set deep into my features. "Were you not here during all of that? Dad, you basically choked Sammy out to try and convince him to come with us." A scoff catapults itself from my throat. "I don't know if you noticed but, uh, I don't think he wants to come with us."

"You mind saying that again, Dean?" His eyes are sharpened blades and his tone sends my left eye into a twitching frenzy once again. 

"I don't think he wants to come with us.." My words come out in a hush, getting lost in the spilled words bound together on the floor. Lifting my foot up off of a book, I stand up as straight as I can.

"Sam has responsibilities to fulfill, Dean. A family to support. I don't care if he wants to come with us or not. I say he comes with us and that's that, understand?" His words are more set in stone than a question that can go anyway I want it to depending on my answer. There's one answer and one answer only when it comes to fathers like these.

"Yes, Sir."

When he turns for the door, he doesn't forget to sling more orders my way. "And, Dean? I noticed the impala on the way in. Why don't you touch it up before it rusts? I wouldn't have given you the damn thing if I thought you were gonna ruin it." My heart drops. Each word lands on me like a flea, relentlessly gnawing through my thick leather jacket, burrowing deep into my skin. Sometimes he speaks to me as if I'm gum at the bottom of his shoe when I've literally risked my life more than I can count for that man. But what can I do?

I keep my mouth shut like I'm supposed to.

"Let's go find your brother before he disappears."

"Him? Disappear? There's honestly no way. Have you seen how big he is?" A smile snakes its way over my lips as we walk out the door, making sure to swing it shut behind us once we're clear out in the hallway. Over the last couple years, I'd always refuse to admit that Sam had outgrown me but now that he's really getting older, I can't even begin to hide it anymore. The boy is starting to tower over me and engulf me entirely in his shadow. I need to catch up..

"Yeah, but he knows his way around this school a hell of a lot better than we do." He has a point. Sam's been here for a good week and a half and the kid has the memory of a damn elephant.

Honestly part of me hopes he finds a real nice hiding spot in the walls to stay in so dad will get tired and give up. Sam deserves to be free. But we both know that getting John Winchester to give up on making our lives hell is harder than breathing when you haven't wanted to breath for a long time.

"Dean, seriously, keep up. We don't have all day."

"Yes, Sir." I easily comply, shoving my hands into my pockets. Sam, I know you can't hear me, but I hope you've found a good place to hide.

"Dean."

"Hm?"

"Look." When I look up from my shoes, I almost run into him, his face screwing up into a distasteful knot. He points out a window revealing the front lawn of the school. "Bingo." Damn it... As soon as he spots Sam, he makes it down the hall and out the door right to where Sam is.

"Sam." My brother turns, his eyes slightly puffy from before.

"No."

"Sam, listen to me. It's time to go." He steps forward a stride. Sam's left knee twitches as if he's dying to run again.

"I already told you. I'm not going. I have things to do here that don't concern you. Hell, you're the one who said 'don't come back', Dad! You're the one that closed that door, not me. So why do you continue to knock when you told me to leave?" My brothers face is twisted up tight with anger, his eyes burning through our father like a resentful cigarette that's been burning far too long.

"Okay.." John pauses, the atmosphere feeling like acid in my lungs with every breath I take. "I've had enough of this shit, Sam." Before I can react, he strides forward and takes Sam by the shoulder, landing a sharp jab to the stomach with his wrapped up fist. A surprised choke hurls itself from Sam, the sound like curdled milk in my ears.

"Dad!" 

"Not now, Dean." 'Not now'? Is he serious?

"No, hitting me is one thing. But Sam? Get your hands off of him." A hot ball of anger quickly burns in my stomach as I rip my brother from my fathers grubby grip. The look on his face is both livid and careless. The mixture giving off a look that makes me feel like he can tear me to shreds or just leave me and Sammy alone forever. But we all know the latter will never happen when it comes to John Winchester.

I almost trip on the way to the car, Sam making a disturbed grunt as he's draped over my shoulder. "Sorry."

"S'okay." Sam's long legs are spaghetti under him as he stumbles along toward the the car with me. I can feel a rebellious energy trickle through him weakly. He can't stand being incapacitated so quickly by our own father when he's fought monsters every day of his life right beside us. It's almost pathetic, in a sense. 

"C'mon, Sammy, it's okay." I gently rest him up against the sleek car as I open the back door, slipping him into the back seat.

"Dean." 

"Don't wanna hear it, Dad. Let's just go." I quickly shut the car door and move around to the drivers side once Sam is laid out on the back seat. With a sigh, I get in the car and rest my forehead on the steering wheel. Sams slightly shaky breathing carves frustrated wrinkles the size of the Grand Canyon into my face. 

"Dean, I don't feel too good." I'm up and looking back in the rear view mirror before he can even think about saying anything else. 

"I know, buddy, it's okay. Roll down the window, alright?" The impala's engine roars to life as I turn the key and we begin our shitty journey away from Sams heaven. God, I always let him have a taste of his dream life and then I'm forced to tear him away. I'm sorry, Sammy..

My phone rings on the dashboard, the little screen flashing "Dad... Dad... Dad..." over and over again. No. Not answering this time. No way in hell after what he just did.


	4. Chapter 4

"Okay." An annoyed grin creeps its way onto John's lips before he sticks his tongue in his cheek, a definite sign that I'm testing his patience. "I've had enough of this shit, Sam." I'm taking my next breath and being cut off with a fist in my stomach, the blow crushing a spider web of cracks into my rib cage.

"Dad!" Dean's voice is a ghost in my mind as I double over, my vision going white as a wave of nausea rushes over me.

"Not now, Dean." The bite in John's words makes my legs shake as Dean pulls me from his grip and holds me under the arms, draping me over his shoulder. The pain that comes with the transfer forces stomach acid to rest at the back of my throat threatening to come up and ruin Dean's leather boots but I choke it back down. My head hangs and my messy hair drapes over my eyes, hiding me from Johns cold stare. I feel like a naive child that's just been scolded except the scolding has come too far and ends with a fist forcing a deep crack into my rib cage.

Before I know it, we're actually moving to the car. I want to run in the other direction. To kick and scream and fight. I can't go back- but the nausea is too much... I feel like I've been diluted down to nothing but pain and vomit that's too shy to actually come up and do its job of ruining the nagging taste of wet pennies that coats my tongue and erodes my teeth.

Dean accidentally slams the toe of his boot into a root, tripping forward with a guilty "Sorry.." before regaining his posture. 

"S'okay." The nausea edges its way through my body and rests behind my eyes like a tapeworm ready to create deep cavers out of my eye sockets. The headache slowly sets in getting worse with every misplaced shoe and stumbled step as Dean carries me across the yard.

"C'mon, Sammy, it's okay." The cold metal of the impala cools my screaming injury under my shirt but it still isn't enough. My ribs shift slightly and I groan sickly at the back of my throat before Dean opens the car door and slips me into the back seat. He bumps me against the cars frame, sending yet another violent wave of nausea doubled with crippling pain through my chest and down to my toes and back up to my pounding head in a flash.

"D..." My voice is a sewer rat trying to escape the sludge that is my throat. I curl up on the back seat and I shield my eyes from the sun filtering through the windows.

"Dean." I hear John step towards Dean, the sound making my skin crawl.

"Don't wanna hear it, Dad. Let's just go." Dean shuts the car door and I hear his boots crunch in the gravel outside the car. John only scoffs in response, marching his way to his own car. Moments later the car rocks under Deans weight as he climbs in with a deep sigh. With the shake of the car, an ocean of sick washes over me and I can feel my insides tense up.

"Dean, I don't feel so good." I feel my eyes prick with tears and I hate myself for it. I've been stabbed, bitten, and thrown up against walls. I've been destroyed in so many different ways so what the hell is my problem? Why am I reduced down to this shell of nausea and tears? How did one stupid little punch from my piece of shit father rip up my insides so badly?

"I know, buddy, it's okay. Roll down the window, alright?" The impala shakes itself awake as Dean turns the key. The old car begins to complain once we roll forward but it decides I'm worse off and stops complaining so we continue on. 

"Mm no, Dean- Something's wrong." Deans phone vibrates on the dashboard and eventually goes cold. "Dean, something's broken," My breath is shaky and heavy as I try to sit up. The effort immediately drains me, slamming me back down to the leather seat. My brain rocks in my head and hits the walls of the skull like a deranged maraca.

"Sammy?" Dean looks back at me through the rear view mirror, his eyes like dark algae with worry, "God... Sammy, you look like shit. What the hell."

"Dean..." I sound so weak and pathetic in my own ears that I can feel my face heat up an insane amount with embarrassment.

"Hey. Hey, buddy, it's okay. Don't worry about anything. Stay still and breathe. We'll get you some help. Just lay down and open the window, okay?"

"Dean, I feel like 'm gonna throw up-" I have to clamp my mouth shut to keep from actually hurling all over the back seat of Deans pride and joy.

"Just breathe. We'll get you somewhere." Dean keeps his eyes on mine through the rear view mirror and steps on the accelerator. "Just breathe. I'm here, Sammy." 

A split second passes and a blasting truck horn rips through the air and a crushing shock wave rips through the car as the truck slams into us and the car begins to spin. I focus on my shaky white knuckled grip on the dark leather seats under me. A deep, shaky groan rumbles from my hoarse throat as the lights go out.

"Dean..." One last whisper. The car lurches one last time and finally skids to a stand still, the whine of the cars frame and Dean's panicky breathing burns into my memory before my head smashes against the hard medal car door and I'm out cold.

"Sam? Sammy!" 


End file.
